


Monodrama

by bunnoculars



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 02:04:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13753962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnoculars/pseuds/bunnoculars
Summary: Jonghyun is in love with Taemin and has feelings about that. Set throughout 2013.





	Monodrama

The dorm is dark when Jonghyun lets himself in, but the door to their room is outlined in amber, and sure enough, Taemin is still up. He’s lying on his back on his bed, paging through Jonghyun’s newest manhwa. Jonghyun has time to take in the loose sprawl of his legs and the strip of stomach peaking out above the waistband of his sweats, before he emerges from behind the book and that stupid-serious look of concentration slips off his face.

And then Taemin smiles up at him. Jonghyun has kind of realized he’s staring and was planning on looking away at some point, but that’s just unfair.

“What?” Taemin says uncertainly, and maybe this is getting awkward, so Jonghyun tells him off just to say something.

“Don’t read that just to make fun of it,” he says lamely, then really thinks about it, adds quickly, “And don’t fold the cover back like that.”

Taemin’s face tells Jonghyun that he thinks Jonghyun is being weird, but he still smooths a hand over the cover, pressing down when it starts to curl. When that doesn’t work, he wriggles up, slots it under his butt and leaves it there. Which, who’s the weird one again?

He can feel Taemin’s eyes following him as he tosses his wallet down on their nightstand and heads over to the closet for a change of clothes.

“Hyung, are you going out again?” Taemin asks, sitting up to watch him.

Jonghyun hesitates.

He’s worked out from one to two every night for a couple years at this point, and tonight was no different. And maybe it’s gotten too routine, because today is another day in an endless string of them where he’s come back and his body is tired, he feels good, and yet nothing else inside him stops, and by morning he’ll be back to feeling just as shitty and used up as he used to, dragging himself to school after trying not to think about it for hours and hours and hours. So now there’s a whole other half of the night, the time where otherwise he would lay there and not sleep.

Sometimes that other half is even sweet, sometimes it’s even the part of his day that keeps him sane for the rest of it. Not this time, because the girl he was kind of dating broke it off with him two weeks ago, but Taemin doesn’t know that.

“Why, are you bored? Can’t sleep? I know you didn’t wait up for me,” Jonghyun says at length, and that last part is the only real question. His fingers trip blindly over clothes hangers as he waits.

“I did, though,” Taemin contradicts him, and Jonghyun’s heart beats like wings in his chest before he goes on. “If I go to bed, you just wake me up when you come back. Less sleep is better than getting frustrated all the time.”

Oh. _Well._

Jonghyun steps out in time to confront Taemin’s bratty smirk. He can feel his own face rearranging itself, totally without his permission, and the sarcasm tastes funny when he lays it on thick, “Wow, Taeminnie, you put up with so much, hyung is sorry,” but all Taemin sees are the ratty sweatpants in his hand, so it’s all right.

Taemin throws himself back onto the bed exultantly, and orders Jonghyun not to take forever in the shower. Jonghyun doesn’t question the lightness in his stomach when he assents in jondaetmal, shuffles out of the room and comes back in under ten minutes to find Taemin rolled into a cocoon, skinny sun-kissed arm hugging his pillow.

“Get the light, hyung,” he reminds him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jonghyun mutters, dry-mouthed, and then in one click Taemin disappears and he has to feel his way over to his bed. He fumbles with his glasses, strips out of his pants quickly and burrows under his blanket. When all five of them shared one room, there was some kind of unspoken, aggregate level of embarrassment that made pajamas non-negotiable, but with just the two of them it’s whatever.

Jonghyun lasts about ten, twenty minutes lying there with his chest squeezing in on itself like a crushed tin can before he thinks maybe he made the wrong choice. He’s determined enough that he gets another half hour’s mileage out of that train of thought: why can’t he say no to Taemin, if he can’t say no why does he say yes so cheaply, he needs to be meaner to Taemin and it’s for Jonghyun’s own good, Taemin’s too probably, but why is everything Taemin does so cute, why is Jonghyun so weak to cute things, why does Taemin take advantage of him like this. Taemin, Taemin, Taemin, papering over the buzzing nothingness taking hold.

“Taemin-ah,” he says into the darkness, when he thinks he’ll go crazy.

“What,” Taemin mumbles into his pillow.

Jonghyun doesn’t know either, says whatever comes to mind. And Taemin listens to him for a while, and then he starts to drift, and then Jonghyun is alone with himself again. And then, again, “Taemin-ah.”

Their orbit deteriorates, to the point where Jonghyun assumes that when Taemin doesn’t answer him the next time, he’s done with him, maybe fallen asleep. His heart seizes when Taemin gets up instead, starts throwing his clothes on. Apologies are already fighting their way up his throat, because what if Taemin is going to sleep out on the couch, but it’s all useless anyway. Taemin just stumbles over to Jonghyun’s bed and glomps him, knocks the breath back into his body.

The next second Jonghyun is paralyzed, suddenly, alarmingly aware of his own naked body under the blanket. “Taemin-ah, what…”

Taemin shifts closer, gets comfortable, mutters, “mind transfer jutsu,” and, “so go the fuck to sleep,” and then he’s out.

And Jonghyun would tell him how mind transfer jutsu works because he seems confused on that point, but he’s preoccupied with keeping his panic at bay. When the ceiling stops bearing down on him and his nervous system reboots, Taemin is still there, warm and soft, leg slung across Jonghyun’s stomach and hand curled into that secret place where his neck meets his shoulder, skin on skin.

Jonghyun is so screwed.

 

Against expectations he falls asleep near dawn, restless and dreamless, wakes up an hour later overheated and cotton-mouthed and hating life. He’s hard, too, so he carefully peels Taemin off him, rolling him up in the blanket, and takes another shower.

He’s too tired for self control, so he jerks off and thinks of nothing but Taemin, the curve of his spine where his shirt had twisted up under him, his pretty leg, smooth under Jonghyun’s hand when he’d lifted it away, his brown hair fanned out on Jonghyun’s pillow and his breath hot against his neck. What would happen next if Jonghyun had just rolled over and pressed Taemin down into the mattress like he’d wanted.

He avoids Minho’s eyes when he meets him in the hallway because it’s too early to face happy, well-adjusted people who go jogging before the sun is up, but when he escapes back to his room he has to deal with Taemin again.

He’s exactly where Jonghyun left him, dead to the world. Jonghyun sinks down next to him, and it seems like so much effort to wake him up that he just sits there and watches him. He doesn’t realize he’s lost track of time until the door springs open and Kibum blows in.

Jonghyun’s pulse spikes crazily and he’s crippled by self-consciousness, caught out, but Kibum doesn’t have to live inside Jonghyun’s head, so he doesn’t care, just sighs impatiently and shoves Jonghyun out of the way, and leans down to shout straight in Taemin’s ear. He almost gets brained when Taemin snaps upright, but it’s not as funny as it should be.

“Jonghyun hyung?” Taemin says groggily, eyes still gummed up with crap, and the sound of his own name does this weird thing to Jonghyun, picks up his whole world and shifts it over a few inches, puts it down where Taemin is cracking his jaw on a yawn, scratching the back of his head, squinting in the half light. He’s so used to it by now that it doesn’t even hurt that much.

 

**So, yeah. Jonghyun is kind of in love with Taemin.**

 

They spent the morning working through kinks in the new choreo, and now they’re on break, sitting in a sprawling circle on the scuffed wood floor. They’re already three days into this process, which means they’re also three days into stuffing themselves with jjajangmyun at lunchtime. As of today, though, the guilt has officially outweighed the pleasure for a majority (so everyone but Taemin and Jingi hyung), and they’re surviving on sandwiches and salads. Jingi hyung is adapting manfully, but Taemin has proven a subversive element, because he’s only interested in the junk food bags split open and spilling their guts in the center. He’s not even playing by the rules like the rest of them, not even pretending to control himself.

Kibum, who has the strongest will of all of them, is eyeing Taemin like he’s trying to figure out if it’s worth the effort to contain him. At length, he observes loudly, “If I weren’t on a diet I probably would have committed a homicide by now. Just saying.”

“Taemin-ah, come on, slow down, you’ll get fat,” Minho tries, when that falls on deaf ears, and Jonghyun has to bite back a laugh at his concerned slash firm big brother voice. It never gets old.

“I’m eating so you guys don’t have to!” Taemin protests, then decides he’d rather swallow his food than spray it on Minho’s face. When Kibum just scoffs instead of backing him up, Taemin slots him an evil smile. “After all, I only gain weight on my face~”

“Aigoo, like that’s something to be proud of,” Kibum retorts, and favors him with that super powered withering look he usually saves for Jingi hyung, when Jingi hyung changes his mind too many times or laughs at his own jokes. “All you have is your face, so please take care of it~”

“If we’re being honest, Taeminnie has his whole body,” Jonghyun says, getting into the middle of it without thinking, maybe thinking about the morning he’s spent watching the lines of Taemin’s limbs break and reform like water. Kibum judges him pretty hard, but it’s worth it when Taemin beams at him, bits of green stuck in his front teeth.

And then not so much, when Taemin leans over and snags a handful of Jonghyun’s chips.

Okay, not his chips, exactly, but they are his flavor. His own salad smells funny to him, and the dressing is sitting in the back of his throat. Minho has a good sense for these things, though, so the next time Taemin tries it, Minho gets all affronted on Jonghyun’s behalf, pinches the plastic between two fingers like the grease is contagious and drags it between him and Jonghyun, out of reach.

Taemin’s face falls, almost like he realizes for the first time what a pig he’s being, and he retreats behind his sandwich. That’s never a good feeling.

Jonghyun has a couple chips, savors them in all their salty, calorific glory. Mourns the rest, and then pushes them back towards Taemin, circumnavigating the pile in the center and coming to a stop at Taemin’s jiggling foot. Taemin’s eyes fly up to his face. Jonghyun knows what smile to give him, nods so much he gets a little dizzy when Taemin asks him guiltily, “You’re really not hungry, hyung? Really, you’re really not?”

He watches Taemin shoot Minho a furtive, smug look over Jonghyun’s shoulder, watches him pick at the chips, and then forget himself, and eat happily. The acid crawls up his own throat, so he doesn’t make himself finish his salad.

Later, when they’re kind of cleaning up, kind of stretching their legs, kind of wasting time, Taemin comes out of the bathroom and wanders up to him, small hand laid over his stomach in sympathy with his digestive tract.

“Hyung, do you feel like you ate at all?”

“What, you’re telling me you don’t?” Jonghyun rejoins, flabbergasted. Taemin’s eyebrows draw together and he presses his mouth into a small line, perfect picture of distress, and Jonghyun can’t handle it. “Taemin-ah…”

“I know. Just…” Taemin drifts, and Jonghyun waits patiently for him to finish his thought. He tries to ignore the water beading on Taemin’s temples and the scrubbed pink of his cheeks for the greasy crumbs still clinging somehow to the corners of his mouth. When Jonghyun takes his face in his hands, intent, Taemin seems to catch up, and his smile unfolds under Jonghyun’s fingertips. “Every time I watch TV, I see people eating Subway, like it’s all they ever want to eat, and it always makes me hungry. But I don’t know, I need rice to feel full. It’s the same when I travel.”

“Taemin-ah. You’ve been _on_ TV. You should know better,” Jonghyun tells him flatly, and he doesn’t mind when Taemin snickers, makes his job that little bit harder.

“Right?” Taemin says, no argument. Then his eyes narrow, and his fingers dart up to Jonghyun’s face, mirroring him, turning his skin tingly cold-hot wherever he touches him. Their breath mingles, and Jonghyun stops trying to meet his eyes, resting his gaze on the bow of Taemin’s lips.

The moment where Jonghyun has wanted to kiss Taemin has stretched past all recognition, from the exact second Taemin smiled at him with his mouth full from a couple feet away a half hour ago, or maybe before that, and it’s still going when Taemin steps away from him, moans, “Ugh, now I’m gonna be thinking about dinner all afternoon,” and then puts his game face back on. Jonghyun isn’t exactly waiting for it to end.

 

He doesn’t know when Taemin got under his skin.

When they first met, Taemin was still a child, but he made Jonghyun feel needed, liked, understood even, and in all the years since he’s never made him second guess any of that, which is a first for Jonghyun. And from the beginning, Jonghyun liked him too, a lot.

But this thing he has for Taemin, it just appeared one day years into their relationship, wholly formed, like an answer Jonghyun wasn’t looking for. The ache he’s felt when he looks at Taemin, the pull when Taemin smiles at him, the push when he won’t meet Jonghyun’s eyes, the way these tiny things can tear him apart—suddenly these were all signs pointing in one direction. And since then it’s lingered in millions of questions. What would it be like if Jonghyun could put his hands on him? What would it be like to cross a line with him? What would it be like if he confessed?

He’s tried to understand himself. After eight years, he knows everything about Taemin, down to a freakish and probably disgusting level of detail, and Taemin has nothing to hide and no way to hide it, so there’s no romance, no mystery. Taemin farts in front of him, picks Jonghyun’s nose as well as his own, mistreats Jonghyun’s things, steals his food, steals his clothes. When he brushes his teeth, he always leaves the toothpaste tube more disgusting than how he found it, and when he’s sick he scatters used tissues wherever he goes. Jonghyun has seen Taemin naked so many times in the past that he doesn’t even feel dirty for looking at him now. And yet.

Maybe there’s nothing really to understand. Jonghyun likes girls, but he likes guys, too, and he’s fucked both. He likes anyone who’s pretty enough, and Taemin is the prettiest. Everything he does is pretty, everything he says is pretty, the air around him is pretty. Taemin is different from everyone.

 

By the time ten p.m. rolls around and they’re finally free to go, Jonghyun is in hell. He was okay not eating earlier but he’s paying for it now, so hungry he’s not hungry, stomach eating itself. His back and shoulders are killing him, too, and it’s cold enough outside that the company’s heating system has kicked into high gear, so the practice room is now a furnace. Somehow his biggest problem out of everything is the idea of his room without Taemin, though, and so Jonghyun stays behind with him while the others trudge out to the van.

And of course Taemin doesn’t know this is all his fault, thinks Jonghyun is here for the same reason he is, so of course they go through the choreo again together. For a while, Jonghyun cooperates, blindly hating the straight up-and-down line of Taemin’s body, how it only breaks down the ways Taemin wants it to. And when he can’t take it anymore, Jonghyun simply stops trying, watches Taemin’s ass when he isn’t looking and fucks around when he is. It takes some time and a broken mic stand he’ll probably try to pin on Minho tomorrow, but eventually Jonghyun cracks Dancing Machine Taemin wide open.

Predictably, the first thing average mortal Taemin asks him is, “Hyung, are you hungry?”

“You’re dangerous,” is all Jonghyun can say, wagging a finger at Taemin’s hopeful look and grabby hands, and trying to remember how much he’s suffered because of him today.

They push through the doors, and the winter night bursts in on Jonghyun. Jonghyun likes to think he knows the smell of freedom, knows it isn’t gasoline and cigarette smoke and city air, but motherfuck if it doesn’t come close right now. Taemin’s everyday smile doesn’t shrink against the cold, so dazzling Jonghyun wishes for the millionth time there were some way he could keep it, save it for later, for when he’s by himself.

“You’ll buy me food, right?” Taemin presses him.

Jonghyun thinks longingly of going back to the dorm, shampooing the sweat out of his hair and making himself ramyun, an egg and some of his mom’s kimchi and only half the flavor packet so he’s not thirsty all night. But Taemin doesn’t like ramyun.

“What does Taeminnie want~?” Jonghyun sings out, feeling a little sadistic.

Taemin’s face goes completely blank for a couple seconds.

Then he warbles, “Taeminnie wants whatever hyung wants~!” and showers Jonghyun with aegyo so grotesque that it’s probably meant to double as revenge, wiggling his shoulders like someone’s jerking his strings, inflating his cheeks and blinking his eyes, and then shooting Jonghyun with finger guns to finish him off. The joke’s on Taemin, though, because there’s not much he can do that Jonghyun would hate. Eventually Taemin exhausts himself, and he gives Jonghyun a beseeching look. “Seriously, though. You haven’t eaten anything all day. You didn’t eat breakfast and I ate your lunch.”

“Then you buy me food,” Jonghyun says, not taking his eyes off him as Taemin’s smile finds its way onto his own face.

 

**The important thing is that he can live with it.**

 

“So now she’s a total outcast. Her best friend totally betrayed her.”

“Uh huh.”

“And the whole class is out to get her.”

“Mmhm.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little extreme, though?”

The coordi noona working on him circles around to stand behind him and Jonghyun cuts his eyes up to glance at Taemin in the mirror. Taemin came earlier with Kibum and is already done, full hair and make up, but he’s lingering in the seat next to him, playing with his phone and paying zero attention while Jonghyun recaps the latest episode of Taemin’s drama. The drama Taemin begged him to watch, because he was filming with his wife until three this morning.

“Then again…maybe not? There were some older guys that bothered me in middle school, but that was on a different level,” Jonghyun says, answering his own question, not really caring whether Taemin hums at him or not. He moves to rub a hand across his own eyes, remembers himself when he hears a warning noise from above his head and carefully picks at the corners. “It was a jealousy thing. Girls liked my face so they hated it, that’s all.”

Coordi Noona openly scoffs at him, but Taemin’s mouth doesn’t even twitch, and Jonghyun is going to say something this time. Then his brain catches up with him and he shuts up for a while, watching Taemin’s reflection, his profile out of the corner of his eye to make sure his silence doesn’t shift into something else. It’s been years now, but if Jonghyun still remembers getting pushed against the wall and slapped around a little, he’s pretty sure Taemin hasn’t forgotten getting followed around, hated on, and fucked with by half his school.

Once he’s sat through an avalanche of boops and clinks and chimes, each one printing a fresh reaction on Taemin’s face, he forges ahead.

“And that other kid, the genius girl. She decides to hang out with the losers too. She’s socially conscious.”

“Huh,” Taemin says to Jonghyun. And then to his cell phone, “Fuck, no!”

“And Go Hyunjung is actually an alien. She gets the kids alone one by one, and eats their brains.”

“Ah, really.”

“Hey, Taemin-ah,” Jonghyun snaps, wrenching around to look him in the face. His shadow falls over Taemin’s screen and Taemin is startled into looking up at him, maybe seventy-five percent focused on him now.

“Yeah, what?” Taemin says, total blank slate, and Jonghyun half wants to force his way into the narrow vee between Taemin’s thighs, half never wants to see his annoying face again. It’s almost a relief when a firm hand descends onto his head and gently turns him back to face forward.

“Nothing,” he sighs, and he feels the look Taemin gives him, can see it perfectly in his head, pinched brow and eyes squeezed with consternation, _Jonghyun hyung is being weird again._

Things are winding down and Taemin and the rest of them are running on fumes now, but it’s only Jonghyun’s second music show appearance for this round of promotions. It’s surprised him, how hard it is to get back into the routine, how hard his body is resisting him, how much harder all the hours where he can be off have become, when they’re supposed to cushion the moments where he has to be on. How somehow it’s not the waiting but the boredom that sets his nerves on fire.

Taemin is there to help with that, but it doesn’t seem like Taemin himself is aware of that fact. Jonghyun shouldn’t have found Taemin’s phone this morning, should have looked for his own instead. He wishes he could take it back now. He imagines snatching it right out of Taemin’s hands, but that’s so absurd he can’t figure out how Taemin would respond, whether he’d pout or play dirty. Maybe he’d just look at him like he’s crazy again.

A little while later, Kibum wanders back into the room. His eyes meet Jonghyun’s in the mirror, and he pulls a grotesque face that Jonghyun one-ups with ease. Jonghyun only loses in the end because Coordi Noona warns him that she’ll start taking creative liberties if he keeps moving around. Kibum gloats, then picks on Taemin instead.

“Taeminnie, Apink is down the hall~” he says, mouth curling into a smirk so slight you’d have to know to look for it. His eyes flit to Jonghyun when Taemin kind of freezes, and Jonghyun does what’s expected, plays along.

“Really? Then why hasn’t jesu-ssi stopped by yet? Marital trouble already?” he says in the stupidest voice he can muster, hating the way the words taste in his mouth. He feels kind of bad, because he knows Taemin is awkward with girls and maybe being half-raised by the four of them has something to do with that, so he lays off a little. “If she’s too shy to come to you, Taeminnie, you should just go to her.”

“It’s not about being shy or not, though. We just saw each other a couple hours ago, I don’t have anything to say right now that I didn’t say before,” Taemin says uneasily, like it doesn’t sound as reasonable outside his own head.

He ignores Kibum to shoot Jonghyun a look, but Jonghyun doesn’t know if it’s an appeal or a reproach because the part of Taemin’s face he can see in the mirror is like a cryptogram. He studies him long enough that he starts to get greedy, so he forces himself to look down at his own lap.

“I don’t know, isn’t marriage the kind of relationship where you say the same things to each other over and over?” Jonghyun says to his knees, feeling put on the spot.

It doesn’t have to mean anything bad; there’s _how many times do I have to ask before you whatever_ , but there’s also _I love you_. Doesn’t have to mean anything, because the context means getting personal like this is totally missing the point. He tries to cover, laughter splintering up his throat, because Kibum has _it’s a reality show, stupid_ plastered across his face. He really doesn’t get himself right now, either.

“Taeminnie has that kind of relationship with everyone, though, so maybe that’s not it,” he says for Kibum’s benefit, and then, straining to catch a glimpse of the real Taemin and cheating as much as he dares, he adds, “I know everything I’ve ever said to you, I’ve said at least twice.”

And everything Jonghyun hasn’t said to him, he’s said a million times.

Kibum looks at Jonghyun even more strangely, but Taemin is rescued from saying anything at all when the next wave of EXO members making the rounds trickles in, and Kim Jongin calls him over. When Jonghyun looks up, it’s just him and Kibum and Coordi Noona, and Taemin’s laughter in his right ear, so heavy his whole world feels off-kilter.

“Your problem is you pick the weirdest moments,” Kibum tells him plainly, and Jonghyun is pretty sure that’s his way of saying that he can see right through him. Jonghyun has his doubts, but if he actually can, that’s fine, too. If anyone ever found him out, it was always going to be Kibum.

Before Kibum can say any more Coordi Noona gets out the hairspray, and he hastily makes his escape, drawn to the other end of the counter by Minho’s high-pitched cackle. Jonghyun is stuck, chemical smell stabbing up his nostrils. He tries to breathe out his mouth and stares at his own face for so long he stops recognizing it, and then closes his eyes instead.

And then from far away Taemin does that stupid snorting laugh usually only Jonghyun can get out of him, and Jonghyun wants to give up. He has the thought that it’s probably just as well that he’s not dating Taemin, because he’d just spend his days jealous of inanimate objects and the girl Taemin plays house with on TV and all the other guys Taemin likes, and then he turns it over, reconsiders. Imagines what it would be like if he had some kind of basic right to the frustration banked inside him, to hold Taemin’s hand in front of everyone and pick as many dumb fights as he needs for it to go away. If he had the kind of power over Taemin that Taemin has over him, where Jonghyun could drive him crazy playing hard to get, until Taemin exploded all over him, and Jonghyun took it all.

But Jonghyun lives in the real world, so when Taemin wanders back over, all he says is, “Hyung, you watched last night, right? I wanna try and catch the new episode tonight but I’m worried I’ll get confused.”

And that—

Jonghyun’s nerves reach flash point. He can’t even tear his own hair or mess up Taemin’s outfit or kiss the question off his face or anything. Anything.

“Don’t talk to me,” he grits out. Draws his hat down over his face and pretends to sleep, and its fresh factory scent overpowers the shit in his hair for a couple moments before the metallic taint creeps back in.

 

**He knows how it would go, anyway.**

 

It’s one of those rare days where they’re totally free, no schedule, no plans with friends or family, and they’re wasting it sitting around and playing Fifa. Jonghyun is just sticking around for the air conditioning, or at least that’s what he’s telling himself.

Taemin, though. He’s figured out how to mess with the settings, and he’s having so much fun with it Jonghyun can’t put his foot down. It’ll probably be worth it the next time Minho turns it on and has a rage blackout, but in the meantime, Jonghyun’s sense of reality has completely slipped. His eyes and hands already ache, and in no time at all, ten of his players are lying on the field with broken legs, and there’s no ref to save him. Taemin has three guys left and he’s scored on Jonghyun’s empty net like six times in the last few minutes, sniggering uncontrollably every time it goes in.

As soon as it’s over, Jonghyun drops his controller and slumps back in his seat, squeezes his eyes shut and presses down with his palms until the black clouds with orange.

“Hyung, I think that’s my shirt,” Taemin says out of nowhere.

“Is it?” Jonghyun can’t really tell when he checks, but he decides to be obnoxious anyway. “I thought it was a little tight.”

“We wear the same size, though?” Taemin says with forced patience, and Jonghyun doesn’t know who’s won, so he leaves it.

“Hyung,” Taemin starts up again after a while.

“What?”

“Should I bulk up, too?”

It’s not completely out of nowhere, because Jonghyun knows where it’s coming from just looking at him, how little he’s changed on the outside since they debuted, how much he’s tried to change inside.

Still. Jonghyun studies him, trying to gauge what kind of answer he wants. Taemin’s smile doesn’t slip.

“I thought you hated exercising just to exercise, Taemin-ah,” he says, playing it safe.

“I do, I really hate it,” Taemin admits easily enough. “But I do a lot of things I hate every day, you know?”

“Then please don’t. I already have to hear about everything else every day, and that’s one more thing,” Jonghyun says hastily, before he reads too much into it, not just the small things Taemin whines about all the time, spiders in the shower, disappearing cell phones, starvation like clockwork. There’s something in Taemin’s face, though, that almost makes him want to take it back, makes him want to think about the bad things, because no one else takes Taemin seriously.

Because he knows how it feels when all the people that run their lives forget they actually exist, that they have things they want to do, how it felt before when men would side-eye him and women would ignore him, how image change shone like salvation. But he’s been on the other side, too, now, knows that his life and his body don’t feel any more his own now that he can bench press his own weight and strip on stage, that those are two separate issues. And Taemin has always had his own kind of strength, his own kind of beauty.

“Your body does what you want it to, right?” Jonghyun says finally.

When Taemin nods without hesitation, like it’s an easy question, he lets himself reach out, slip his fingers up Taemin’s shirt and pinch the soft skin of his stomach, say, “And you’re cute the way you are,” and he’s rewarded when Taemin’s features relax and he squirms away.

And Taemin keeps on smiling to himself, secretly in plain sight, and just as suspicion first prickles Jonghyun’s skin, Taemin gets his revenge.

“Does your body do what you want it to, hyung?” Taemin asks.

He bursts out laughing before he’s even finished, and nothing Jonghyun does to him can make him stop, not even when Taemin loses his seat in the struggle and falls on his ass on the floor. And it’s fine, he can laugh, working out is just a peace of mind thing and Jonghyun knows he’s ridiculous, he’s useless at physical labor and even the smell of violence makes him sick. None of this explains why he still feels hurt.

It’s even more humiliating that Taemin can read him like an open book, even completely out of his mind and gasping for air, staring up at him through the mess of his hair. “It’s okay, hyung, you’re cute too,” he tries to reassure him when he can speak, and then, “When you get a girlfriend you’ll be able to protect her,” and the line is so ridiculous it just sets him off again.

Jonghyun ignores him, or at least he acts like he does. When Jingi hyung wanders out of his room to see what the joke is he pretty effectively kills it, because neither of them feel like explaining it to him, so he goes back to StarCraft and they go back to Fifa, Taemin works on Jonghyun, and Jonghyun sulks. Taemin puts the rules back to normal, probably lets him win the one time he actually does. Keeps feeling up Jonghyun’s biceps, challenging him to ridiculous, hypothetical feats of strength, exclaiming over whatever he says.

And it just depresses him more and more, the way he has to pretend to come around just so Taemin will leave him alone. The way he doesn’t want Taemin to leave him alone, wants to make him nervous like this, so he just keeps sitting there and staring at the TV and playing games.

“Taemin-ah,” he says after a while. “Should I let myself go? Quit working out? I’m tired of treating my hair, too.”

“Then should I stop wearing my contacts, too?” Taemin replies, laughing helplessly like the concept is so weird he’s in love with it, but that’s so far from what Jonghyun meant, what he wanted to hear, that the sound just scrapes his nerves raw. Taemin hasn’t noticed he’s said something wrong yet, so he goes on, “But people would be really shocked if they saw how we normally look, wouldn’t they?”

“Couldn’t you just tell me no?” Jonghyun snaps, and he hates how fast the edge to his voice shuts Taemin up, hates himself for losing control so easily. It’s just, he spends ninety-five percent of his life controlling himself, and it’s too hard, doing it with Taemin on top of everyone else. “’Jonghyun hyung, you’re cool the way you are, so you have to stay that way.’ Like that.”

“Ah,” Taemin blurts out, like Jonghyun has just solved an impossible math problem, and the corners of his mouth lift, small and uncertain. He gives Jonghyun a cheesy thumbs up and says with unflinching sincerity, “Jonghyun hyung is the best!”

So Jonghyun goes back to pretending everything is fine, and Taemin goes back to faking it until he can figure out how to fix things. Jonghyun doesn’t know why he keeps putting things on Taemin that Taemin can’t understand. Because the problem isn’t that Jonghyun likes the parts of Taemin that Taemin himself doesn’t know how to embrace, and sees things in Taemin that he can’t find in himself, the problem is that he expects Taemin to do the same for him, when Taemin has nothing to do with the stuff in Jonghyun’s head.

And then there’s the whole other thing. The main thing if he’s honest with himself, and it’s a total cliché, but he wants to be a man to Taemin. He likes how small Taemin’s hands feel in his, how light he feels in Jonghyun’s arms, how easy it is to overpower him. But then it’ll hit him sometimes, like right now, watching Taemin pretend not to watch him, that Taemin probably doesn’t want any of that from him, maybe likes girls with long hair and soft curves and mysterious smiles, maybe doesn’t like anything at all. And then his own vanity turns on him, because the body he’s tried to perfect is useless, because he can’t compete, because he doesn’t know how else to be.

“Taemin-ah,” suddenly pops out of his mouth again, and he can’t fight the insane urges he gets all the time, and Taemin is waiting, so, “If I were a girl…would you date me? Not Jonghyun hyung, but Jong…Jonghee noona?”

They don’t pause the game, but Jonghyun can tell Taemin is actually mulling it over, from the way he chews his lip and squints his eyes, the way he doesn’t take advantage when Jonghyun stops watching the television. Eventually he asks, like he’s looking for some kind of hint, “You’re a girl, but nothing else changes?”

Jonghyun knows that’s impossible, but he nods. “Nothing else changes.”

“Then…I still like Jonghyun hyung better?” Taemin says, then more definitively when Jonghyun opens his mouth to protest, “I’d rather keep Jonghyun hyung, and worry about dating later.”

“I wouldn’t date Taehee, either,” Jonghyun says spitefully, and from the crimp of his mouth, he’s pretty sure even Taemin knows he’s lying.

He doesn’t recognize the thing on his own face as a smile for the longest time.

 

**And it only becomes a problem when Jonghyun forgets that he’s alone.**

 

The day officially started at four in the morning today, Jonghyun’s unofficially started at like four in the morning yesterday, and it’s mid-afternoon now. He’s been here a million times over the years, zombie tired, crammed into layers and layers of dubious fashion and left to roast under harsh studio lights, different people asking the same questions, but it’s never stopped wearing him down, or frying his filter.

They’ve already been through the oldies but goodies—which member they would date if they were a girl (Taemin chose Jingi hyung), which member is the manliest (Taemin chose Jingi hyung), which member they would ask for advice (Taemin chose…Jingi hyung)—and now they’ve moved on to long-form question and answer, and Jonghyun can’t take it anymore. He’s past the point where he has to say everything for everybody just to feel like he’s in control, and now he just wants it to be over so badly he could weep.

Taemin is holding up better, but that’s probably because he’s slept in the last forty-eight hours, four hours last night, an extra thirty minutes this morning while Jonghyun wrestled his blanket off him, and then another twenty on top of that, snoring in Jonghyun’s ear in the backseat on the way over here. He looks so good right now, in fact, that Jonghyun half wants to hate him, half wants to beg him for mercy.

Instead he leans in and breathes into his ear, “Talk to me, Taeminnie, please~, I can’t stay awake, I’m going crazy.”

When he pulls away Taemin shifts to get a better look at him, dark eyes traveling over his features slowly and surely, and when his lips curve Jonghyun thinks he’s saved. Sure enough, Taemin leans in…

…And grunts, hoarse and deep and dumb-sounding, right down his earhole. Taemin checks his reaction, so obviously pleased with himself that Jonghyun’s nerves trill in sympathy, bringing him dangerously close to smiling. Ideally, Taemin would pay for fucking with a desperate man, but instead Jonghyun finds himself giving him puppy dog eyes, wiggling his shoulders subtly.

Taemin hesitates, watching him, and then he leans in again. Grunts again.

Taemin has to look away to control himself this time, fist pressed to his mouth, and Jonghyun just watches, waits until the flush fades from his cheeks and his chin lifts and he emerges, straight-faced, and then slips his arm back casually and grips the nape of Taemin’s neck. Taemin’s shoulders stiffen and then slump bonelessly, and his eyes dart up to Jonghyun’s face, there and gone so quickly Jonghyun barely feels them. And when he draws him in, Taemin goes willingly, presenting his ear to Jonghyun’s lips.

Jonghyun sets his teeth into it.

His nose is pressed into Taemin’s soft hair and Taemin’s flesh is on his tongue, and for a couple seconds his entire universe smells like Taemin and tastes like Taemin, and then he hears Taemin breathe out on a hiss, comes crashing back to earth and then it’s over, it was just a joke and it’s over.

He has to cross his legs for the rest of the interview and Taemin’s ear burns red for the rest of it too, and his brain is stuck on rewind, five seconds ago, then five minutes ago, then fifteen, doesn’t seem to matter, but it’s over.

 

A couple hours later, Jonghyun has reached the next stage of exhaustion, the part where he’s so tired he can’t sleep, even when he has Taemin’s thigh for a pillow. They can go home in a couple hours, but right now, they’re back at the broadcasting studio, back in the same waiting room they used this morning. On a good day Jonghyun only really dislikes “Everybody” because “Symptoms” is his baby, but right now he wants to kill it and set it on fire, because he’s got his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up, and he’s still sweating like a pig in his uniform.

And again, Taemin is totally fine. He was playing with Jonghyun’s hair before, and Jonghyun preferred that, but now he’s playing with Jonghyun’s phone instead. He lost his own yet again the day before yesterday. It’d take a million years they don’t have right now just to retrace his steps that day, but he hasn’t had time to buy a new one, either.

“Hyung, you don’t have Jonginnie’s number?” Taemin asks him.

“I guess not? It’s a new phone.” Jonghyun lost his last one for good two months ago, but the one before that lasted a year and a half, so he’s free to judge Taemin. When he opens his eyes Taemin doesn’t notice, fingers flying over the keyboard. He says casually, “You should have it memorized, you can put him in.”

“I did already, I was just asking,” Taemin says, on fifteen-second delay, and Jonghyun is surprised at how much that annoys him. Then, like a minute later, “He believed it was me right away, though. It’d probably be really easy to scam him, wouldn’t it?”

Jonghyun hesitates. Taemin’s face looks unfamiliar from down here, and he’s relearning the shelf of his jaw, swell of his cheekbone. “Do you even have my number memorized?”

“Nope,” Taemin replies, way too easily. Jonghyun doesn’t even say anything, but Taemin seems to sense it anyway, because his gaze flicks down, and Jonghyun shuts his eyes a second late. “What?”

“Nothing,” Jonghyun says, and when he checks, Taemin catches him again, and he’s not even trying to hide his smile. Even from this angle Jonghyun knows it’s real, it’s not the awkward one Taemin can’t control, so it’s okay.

“I talk to Jonginnie on the phone every day, and I talk to you in person every day. When am I supposed to call you if we’re together twenty-four seven?” Taemin says, bemused. He pushes his cool hand across Jonghyun’s forehead, fingers tangling in Jonghyun’s bangs and pulling a little when his palm lowers over Jonghyun’s eyes. “Go to sleep, I won’t blow your phone up.”

Jonghyun’s feelings outgrow his body, and there’s nothing he can do with them, so he makes a giant show of getting comfortable, wriggling onto his side and kicking his legs out so his feet dangle over the armrest on the other end of the couch, lets them get lost in the creaking leather and the secret smile on his face.

Even when that fades, though, the terrible rush in his blood doesn’t, and it’s just as well that Taemin can’t even last five minutes before he forgets, talks to Jonghyun again.

“Wow, hyung, when did you have time to record all these?”

As soon as the words hit him, alarm bells go off in Jonghyun’s head—his demos—and he levers himself upright and grabs at his phone, snatching it away so easily he feels a little stupid. Once he gets a look at Taemin’s face, dumb with surprise, it gets worse. He’s more embarrassed than he would have been if Taemin had been looking to make fun of him.

“Hyung, can you play one for me?” Taemin wheedles, recovering faster than him. “One I haven’t heard before.”

Jonghyun does.

He turns up the volume on his phone until the song fills the empty spaces between them. Taemin just listens for a while, and then the beat infiltrates his body, steals up his spine and taps out his fingertips, and then he gets up and dances, and Jonghyun just sits there and watches it happen, watches Taemin move, trying not to react.

When that gets impossible, he gets up, too, and joins Taemin. At first he goes a little nuts, trying to get it out of his system, but when Taemin’s laughter dies and he starts to get into it, Jonghyun lets himself get pulled in, stares into Taemin’s eyes and matches his movements. He thinks he can feel Taemin’s breath on his face, but he’s not sure of everything right now.

And then the song stops, and everything inside Jonghyun stops, because he knows the one that’s coming next and he hates it. He dives for his phone, all the way back over there on the couch, but Kibum has gotten there first, because suddenly he and Taemin aren’t the only two people in existence. He sees Jonghyun coming and clambers onto the couch, and by the time Jonghyun climbs up after him, he’s passed it over to Minho, they’re already a minute in, volume all the way up, and it’s game over.

“Why are you being like this, hyung?” Minho says to him, and Jonghyun always has trouble telling his please-punch-me-in-the-face-hyung voice and his aren’t-you-cute voice apart. His eyes are huge when he looks down at Jonghyun. “It’s good, honestly. I really like it.”

“I hate it, though,” Jonghyun says, breathless with frustration, “ _I_ hate it.”

“Taeminnie likes it, right?” Minho says, glancing over his shoulder, and Jonghyun whirls around in time to see him nod.

“If Jonghyun hyung wrote it, I like it,” he says stoutly.

And then Jingi hyung is petting Taemin’s hair and Kibum is pinching his cheek, sniggering, “Aigoo, what kind of answer is that,” and Taemin is shooting smiles at Jonghyun and Jonghyun’s stupid, embarrassing fail from a year and a half ago is blaring and he doesn’t want any of it, he’s so tired of being like this.

 

When they get corralled backstage with all the other groups before filming gets underway for the announcement and encore, Jonghyun finds Taemin alone, squatting on his haunches in a corner with his face hidden in his arms, and Jonghyun’s nerves over winning or not are eating him alive, so it’s easy enough to sink down next to him and ask him, it’s just one more thing.

“Taemin-ah, about what you said earlier…did you mean that?”

“What?”

Of course Taemin doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and of course it gets harder to say anything when Taemin is waiting.

“That you just liked that song because I wrote it,” Jonghyun says to the floor.

“Mm,” Taemin says, and that’s so Taemin-like Jonghyun doesn’t know if he wants to strangle him or kiss him. Maybe both, in moderation.

“So would you like it if it were crap?” Jonghyun’s voice is already rough from trying to outsing the AR in the morning and then blabbing all day, but he still hates how twisted up it sounds, is afraid Taemin will hate it too, so he forces a laugh, forces himself to breathe. “I don’t know if you’re trying to make me feel good, but it’s actually pretty shitty hearing things like that. It just turns all the stuff I’ve done that I actually like into a joke.”

Taemin seems to struggle with himself for a couple seconds before he speaks, and when he does, all he says is, “If that’s really how you see yourself, that’s your problem, hyung.”

“What does that mean?” Jonghyun demands, and he’s not sure if he’s angry or confused or anything at all.

Taemin holds his eyes for a couple seconds, then grows shy, leaves Jonghyun with the turn of his pretty cheek and the delicate furl of his ear.

“It means…I wish you could see the you I see, and.” It takes him a minute before he can get the rest out. “And also. Just because you don’t like something about yourself, something you wrote or did or whatever, I have to hate it too? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Jonghyun doesn’t realize he’s reached out until he sees his own hand and feels Taemin’s hair between his fingers, but he would’ve done it anyway. He tucks a strand behind Taemin’s ear, wanting his eyes, his mouth again. He feels so strange, tender and raw, like he wants Taemin to stare at him and only him for days and days or maybe never look at Jonghyun again.

But when he gets what he wants, when Taemin looks at him, he has about five seconds before Taemin leans over and bites Jonghyun’s ear, hard. The shock knocks Jonghyun back on his ass, and Taemin hides his smirk against his arm, hugging his knees.

And Jonghyun will never get tired of doing this to himself.

 

**He’s almost confessed a million times.**

 

Jonghyun trips over Taemin’s shoes in the entryway, so he’s prepared when he sees him back in their room again. They haven’t had a schedule since the beginning of the week, so Taemin has been going home to sleep, or at least that’s what he always says he does, and Jonghyun has gone two whole days now without seeing or hearing from him. They both have their headphones in, so Jonghyun takes quick, greedy gulps of Taemin’s eye smile, his soft pink mouth, and goes off to shower. And then when he comes back, Taemin is gone. He finds him in the kitchen instead, emptying their fridge into a giant bowl of rice.

“Don’t your parents feed you at all?” Jonghyun says from across the room, before he remembers he needs to keep it down and goes to take a closer look. He’s just in time to catch Taemin going through the banchan Jonghyun brought back from home a week or two ago. He snatches the tupperware out of Taemin’s hands, scandalized. “What do you think you’re doing, my mom made that!”

“I’m rescuing it! It’s better off eaten than rotting in the fridge for another month,” Taemin insists, then gives Jonghyun a sly grin that hooks in his stomach. “I’ll let you have some if you help~”

Jonghyun narrows his eyes at him. “Even if I don’t, do you think you can eat all that by yourself?”

“You think I can’t?” Taemin retorts, completely unfazed.

Jonghyun isn’t exactly sure how it happens, but he ends up doing all the work. The rice has gone dry and stubborn with cold and age, and as he muscles it into his submission the wooden spoon bites into his palm and his arm starts to ache, already sore from lifting weights. Taemin is happy to make him suffer, though, ignoring the names scribbled across the lids and picking and choosing his favorites, snapping container after container open and shaking their contents out into the center of the bowl. Jonghyun bites his tongue when it rains chili peppers and garlic cloves, but when Taemin gets out the gochujang he can’t do it anymore.

“Don’t, Taemin-ah,” he warns, too loud, trying to shield their creation with his body, but Taemin crowds up behind him, pressed flush to Jonghyun’s back, and his brain blinks out for the few crucial seconds it takes for Taemin to reach right over him and scrape up giant dollops that drop like bombs out of the tub. The first thing he realizes is that Taemin is giggling like crazy right in his ear, little hitched breaths, and then his muscles kick in again and he wrenches himself sideways, out from between Taemin and the counter.

He’s stepped on Taemin’s foot, but the small pained noise that follows doesn’t compute, and for a while he can’t say anything, just stares down at the mess Taemin has made in growing dismay.

“I mean…how are we supposed to eat that?” he says finally.

Taemin sidles up next to him, takes a look at the rice, and then at him.

“I could take some out still,” he offers uncertainly, but somehow that makes Jonghyun want to deal with it even less, so he just shoulders Taemin out of the way and finishes mixing it in silence, brings it over to the table and throws himself down along with it.

Taemin sits across from him and digs in, watching Jonghyun furtively as he takes his first couple of bites. It tastes like nothing to him, but he can already feel the sweat pricking his cheeks and hands. He doesn’t feel like trying, right now, anyway, and the click of his spoon against his table gives him the sense of finality he’s looking for, but Taemin doesn’t notice anything, doesn’t check on him again.

“Do you actually like it like this?” Jonghyun asks him, and his own voice sounds brittle.

Taemin nods, stores his mouthful in one bulging cheek and replies, “You don’t? It’s not that bad, though.”

“You can eat it, you mean. It’s not that you like it,” Jonghyun persists, because he doesn’t know where the bitter swell rising inside him is coming from, but somehow that distinction is the whole point. “And okay, this is something small, but I wouldn’t be saying anything if you didn’t do shit like this all the time. I’ll be doing fine with something and then at the very end you’ll come in and fuck it up, and then you’ll just want to pretend it’s fine.”

Taemin just stares at him silently, spoon suspended in midair as he chews and chews, and Jonghyun feels like Taemin is forcing the words out of him, the one thing he didn’t want to say. “You _know_ I can’t eat spicy things!” When Taemin doesn’t say anything to stop him, he keeps going, even though it just makes him feel shittier and shittier, “And you know I can’t eat like you do, either. I’ve probably gained weight just looking at it—”

“Fine, then don’t eat it,” Taemin cuts in sharply, and Jonghyun gets a brief vision of flashing eyes before Taemin yanks the bowl towards himself and starts shoveling giant spoonfuls of rice into his mouth, head down.

The surprise cleans him out for a couple seconds, and then his snit takes a sudden hard turn into crazy-making guilt that nails him to his seat. It should be so easy to say some of the things spinning around his head, _hyung is an ass_ , and, _don’t be mad at me_ , and, _I didn’t mean to take my shit out on you again, I’m just really tired_ , but he can’t make himself do it. He keeps trying and failing to figure out the parts of Taemin he’s been left with, tense curl of his arm around the bowl, stiff line of his shoulders and the stubborn crown of his head, but all he gets back is silence.

 

He can never outlast Taemin when he gets like this, so he just gets out instead. He’s dressed for bed and his face broke out again recently, so he grabs his coat on his way out and pulls the hood low over his face, even though he knows he’ll probably boil because fall has betrayed him and it’s been getting warmer instead of colder lately. When he walks outside it’s like stepping into a trap, because it’s the same night he’d have found a month or two ago, close and rain-scented and drenched in yellow and blue, ghost of summer. He knows he won’t be able to escape any of this, no matter how far he goes, so he takes it slow and stays in the neighborhood, avoiding the few people he sees.

When he feels so gross he can’t take it anymore, he risks human contact at a convenience store and then sits down to enjoy the temperature control and bright white everything, and nurses a coffee. No one wants to sit next to him at the counter and he’s totally okay with that, at peace with the fact that he reeks and probably looks like a creep. He stays long enough to get “Growl” stuck in his head, and to come around to the fact that he won’t be able to get Taemin out of it, and then he heads back.

 

He half expects to find Taemin where he left him, eating his anger, but to his relief he’s freshly showered and sitting on the couch, playing video games on mute, pretty face washed with pale light. He doesn’t move when Jonghyun crosses in front of him and takes a seat right next to him, and maybe he doesn’t realize that all it would take is one look to make Jonghyun grovel, because he just sits tight and ignores him instead, gives Jonghyun something to work with.

His hair is still wet, and when Jonghyun sneaks a hand into it, the strands slip right through his fingers. Taemin’s own hand darts up and pushes his away, and Jonghyun gives him a couple seconds to think he’s won before he does it again, toying with the soft hair at the nape of his neck. He’s close enough that he can smell Taemin’s shampoo, and after the sweaty hell he’s been through it makes him lightheaded, makes it easier to stare and stare until Taemin’s expression slips and he grabs Jonghyun’s hand, drags it away from him.

“Why do you always think annoying me is going to make me forget I’m mad?” Taemin says impatiently, before he cuts himself off and takes several deep breaths.

Jonghyun doesn’t say anything when Taemin runs Mario right off a cliff, and Taemin doesn’t look away from it when the screen goes black, game over.

“Where do you go at night?” Taemin asks him out of nowhere. Jonghyun never even knew he wanted to know. Taemin sneaks a glance at him in the dark, seems surprised when Jonghyun catches him right away. “Are you dating or something?”

Jonghyun doesn’t really know what to say, because the answer to both questions has changed so many times since he stopped sleeping again that it makes him tired just thinking about it.

“Tonight I just walked around for a while, and then sat around in a convenience store for a while,” he says finally, and the truth is so boring, comes so easily that Taemin takes a while to catch up, and doesn’t seem to trust it when he does. Jonghyun wants to smooth the pucker between his eyebrows with his thumb, tries to make him laugh instead, demands, “What do you think I am, do you think I’d go meet someone looking like this?”

That does it.

“You just don’t know how weird you are, hyung,” Taemin says, but he’s still smiling to himself and there’s no bite to his words.

“What about you? I thought you were a ghost when I came in just now,” Jonghyun counters, combing his hand through Taemin’s hair again just because he can, fascinated with the way it slides against his skin.

“I never said I’m normal,” Taemin retorts. There’s a pause, but Jonghyun waits, because even in the dark he can read Taemin’s face, knows that he’s working up to saying something. Sure enough, he comes right out with it. “When I say I’m going to sleep at home, it can mean a lot of different things now.”

That isn’t exactly news. Jonghyun has figured as much before, and how could he not when he knows the signs so well, the Taemin that comes back fresh and bright and quiet, versus the Taemin with bruised eyes and nervous energy jittering just under his skin. But hearing Taemin confirm it is a little different. He isn’t prepared for the tightening in his stomach, the way his curiosity roars to life, sharpens into the kind of obsession that kills all other thought.

“You’ve evolved, Taeminnie, you lie to hyung’s face now,” he says, grabbing onto something obvious while he finds his footing. Taemin just smirks at him, and Jonghyun goes a little crazy inside, immediately gives up on self-control. “Friends? Girlfriend?”

Taemin’s mouth curls, caught awkwardly between a smirk and something sweeter. He shakes his head, picks up his controller again like he’s just remembered it exists, says, “It’s a secret.”

“So…girlfriend?”

Or boyfriend, maybe? It’s on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back. Taemin knows about him, even met the one boyfriend he’s had, the year before they debuted, but Taemin has never said anything about himself, and in all his time watching him Jonghyun has never seen anything he can be sure of either way.

Taemin just looks at him, and Jonghyun’s frustration gets the better of him, shoves him onto the defensive. “What, I can’t ask? You asked me, though.”

“Ah, hyung, really…it’s not like that.” Taemin slumps back against the back of the couch and scrunches his face up, and Jonghyun wishes the glow of the television didn’t bleed the color out of Taemin’s face so he could see if he’s blushing. When he peers down at him, though, Taemin doesn’t shy away. “It’s more like I need time for myself? I don’t do anything special, but I don’t want to talk about it in case it starts feeling like it’s part of the rest of my life.”

And that…Jonghyun wants to argue, but he understands Taemin, and he understands himself, maybe a little too well. Knows that really, he just wants Taemin to tell him he’s different, he’s the exception, that he’s not one of the things he needs to escape from, that telling him everything would be the same as keeping it to himself. But Taemin is watching him instead of the game again, and Jonghyun doesn’t want him to see anything on Jonghyun’s face that would make him regret saying this much.

“So basically you go to a PC bang and play around all night, and you don’t want to admit it to me. I can understand that,” he says, trying not to sound as careful as he feels, and just like that Taemin can smile again, repeats sunnily, “Yep, I go to PC bangs,” and Jonghyun’s heart hurts, looking at him.

Taemin kills Mario a couple more times and then calls it quits. Jonghyun showers for the third time today and follows him to bed, then lies there for as long as he thinks he can afford to wait.

“Taeminnie, you know I love you, right?” Jonghyun says into the dark, and as soon as the words are out of his mouth he’s anxious to know that Taemin has heard them.

“Mm,” Taemin mumbles. And then that’s it, silence.

“Aren’t you going to say it back?” Jonghyun prompts him.

Taemin doesn’t make him wait. “I love you, Jonghyun hyung,” he says quick and low, like the words were stuck in his throat.

Jonghyun tries to sleep.

 

**But he won’t lose anything if he waits for Taemin to notice him.**

 

The barbecue place is noisy and smoky and crowded, and their table is probably the loudest of them all. Jonghyun only came because it’s been so long since the five of them went out for a meal together, and Jingi hyung promised to buy him pork belly.

The rest of them are competing viciously for the beef. Taemin is the only one that likes it rare, so he snatches it up almost as soon as it sizzles onto the grill, but he’s also the maknae and the others have started pouring him drinks left and right to distract him. Jonghyun would be happy to stay out of it, but Taemin is really pretty when he smiles at him, and he’s so cute with his mouth full, so maybe he puts his thumb on the scale a little, tends their side of the grill obsessively, takes meat he has no intention of eating himself.

And then Jingi hyung turns on him, and it’s all over. Jonghyun barely knocks back the first drink before Jingi hyung leans over and fills his glass again.

“You’re doing this to me on purpose, right?” Jingi hyung startles at his tone, and somehow Jonghyun feels like he’s the one bullying him, so he finishes lamely, “Stop it.”

Jonghyun can’t drink at all, a few shots and he forgets how to speak Korean, and then a few more and the tears come, and by the end he’s not human anymore, he’s some kind of primordial slug. He usually escapes and goes home somewhere in the middle, so maybe it’s worse when the others take mercy on him, and he’s stuck feeling like a loser while the four of them destroy their livers and don’t feel a thing.

Jingi hyung is about to apologize for something he probably didn’t even do when Taemin’s hand sneaks up and he takes Jonghyun’s drink, throws it back before Jonghyun can even say anything.

“Wow, Taeminnie, so manly,” Minho crows, but he’s looking at Jonghyun, mouth hitching into a giant shit-eating grin. “When did our Taeminnie become such a man?”

“Am I your girlfriend or something?” Jonghyun snaps, humiliated, but he regrets it as soon as Taemin freezes, caught out, like he’s not sure if he did something wrong.

He doesn’t give himself time to think before he finds Taemin’s foot under the table with his own, and when Taemin relaxes against him, thigh pressing into his, Jonghyun can eat again. And the next time Kibum pours Jonghyun a drink, watching the both of them like a cracked sphinx, Jonghyun’s eyes find Taemin all on their own, and Taemin’s hand brushes against his on the table as he reaches for his glass again.

Kibum and Minho can’t move past the whole exchange, are just buzzed enough that they’ve entered that obnoxious, bratty state where their amusement feeds on itself, and repetition only makes things funnier and funnier. They keep pouring Jonghyun drinks, “Jungyeon-ah, your glass is empty,” and then laughing their heads off when Taemin takes it again, and again, and again. And then one of them decides it would be funny to fill Taemin’s glass again, demand, “Aigoo, Taeminnie, why aren’t you drinking?” like it’s an outrage, and it’s endless, it’s not fair, there are two of them and only one Taemin. And Jonghyun knows Taemin is drinking too much, knows he should rescue him, but he can’t seem to kill the fluttering thing inside him, can’t stop his own greed for Taemin’s dopey smile, the delicate turn of his profile and the long line of his neck.

Jingi hyung ends up eating all the beef.

 

Taemin doesn’t need his help getting his coat on or navigating to the door, but he staggers into him when they pile out into the cold air, and Jonghyun gets an arm around him, feels that first stab of guilt. He thinks they’re going to call a taxi, but the rest of them don’t want to go home, they want to walk for a while, sober up, and Jonghyun gets dragged into it when Taemin follows them blindly.

Taemin can hold his liquor better than all of them except Jingi hyung and maybe Minho, but they don’t get far before he convinces Jonghyun that he’s really drunk this time. Most people are like Jonghyun, they lose control of themselves, say and do all kinds of stuff, but Taemin just goes quiet and climbs deeper and deeper into himself, probably hiding from his own confusion. The first time Jonghyun reaches for him, he fights him off, huddling in on himself, and then he sees who it is and gives him a smile that makes Jonghyun dizzy, stops him in his tracks and lays gravel in his throat.

“Taeminnie, come here,” Jonghyun says, stepping in front of him and getting down.

When Taemin mills uncertainly, he doesn’t wait for him to figure it out, just grabs Taemin’s arm and pulls it over his shoulder, and Taemin gets the idea, gets on his back, nearly rips the collar of Jonghyun’s shirt when Jonghyun straightens and his feet leave the ground. He adapts pretty quickly, though, puts all his weight on him and holds on so tight his fingers dig into Jonghyun’s flesh and smiles into his neck, drools on him a little.

Jonghyun’s shoulders ache but Taemin gets lighter the further they go.

When Kibum gets one good look at Jonghyun’s face he laughs out loud, shakes his head at him. “What are you smiling for, you psycho? You’re that happy?”

 

**He’s already gone crazy.**

 

Jonghyun is having a bad night. When he closes his eyes everything crowds in on him, and when he opens them he sees nothing at all, and he doesn’t know which one is worse. Taemin stopped replying a half hour ago, but Jonghyun can’t stop trying to find things to say to him, and he knows he’s still awake because his breathing hasn’t changed. And he knows he’s keeping him up, dragging Taemin out of his night and into his own, and he can’t stop doing that, either.

So it’s the same night they’ve shared almost every night they’ve spent in this room together. There’s nothing that sets it apart, nothing that explains why tonight’s Taemin throws his blanket off and clicks the lamp on and blinds them both, and then sits cross-legged and squints over at Jonghyun.

“Hyung, do you like me or something?”

Jonghyun’s world grinds to a halt in a nanosecond.

“How did you know?” is what Jonghyun thinks he gets out, but it’s garbled, too quick, and he can barely make sense of anything. He scrabbles for his glasses and knocks them off the nightstand, and his stomach almost comes out of his mouth when he leans over the side of his bed to get them, and then Taemin is right there, Taemin’s face, and. “How—” he bites his tongue hard because that’s not right, it’s so impossible to get this right.

“I was never going to say anything,” Taemin says like he hasn’t heard him, desperate whine in his voice like Jonghyun is forcing him to say this, “but I’m so tired and you never leave me alone and you never let me sleep.”

Somehow, Jonghyun has never imagined this part. The end. His body doesn’t feel like it belongs to him, heart hammering against his rib cage like it wants out.

“I’m sorry, Taeminnie,” he says in a rush, and he’s babbling, tripping over himself to get it out there, this thing he doesn’t mean. “I didn’t mean for things to turn out like this, hyung is just…I’m just…”

Taemin’s face freezes, and he’s not looking at Jonghyun anymore, and Jonghyun’s voice dries up, because somehow he’s getting this so wrong.

“What are you sorry for?” shoots out of Taemin like a cork. He’s hugging his blanket to his chest and staring straight ahead, blinking fast. “It’s okay. I thought maybe you were the same as me. It’s okay if you’re not.”

He throws Jonghyun a horrible smile, and that’s the last Jonghyun sees of him before he shuts the lamp off with his quick hands and flops down again.

“Taeminnie—”

“You can shut up now,” Taemin says very fast, and the next time Jonghyun says his name he ignores him.

Jonghyun doesn’t know what is happening, why Taemin turned Jonghyun upside down and shook everything out of him and then didn’t even look at any of it, didn’t give him any time and left Jonghyun alone like this, how he could think he’s the crazy one, when Jonghyun is right here. How he could think he’s alone, when Jonghyun is right here.

“Taeminnie, what do you mean the same,” he says, so desperate to understand he’s crazy, totally fucking insane, and laughter rips up his throat, no warning, and when he reaches out and turns the lamp back on he’s shaking so hard he almost bowls it over. “You like me? What, like you want to fuck me?”

He barely gives Taemin a second before he goes over there, baseline awareness that he’s naked and this could turn into one of the worst memories of his life, but he doesn’t really give a shit, and once he gets his hand on Taemin’s shoulder he stops thinking at all. Taemin fights him the whole way, ripping away from his grip and curling in against himself and hiding his face in the mattress, but Jonghyun gets him up, locks his hands around Taemin’s jaw and lifts his head. Taemin stares him right in the eye because Jonghyun won’t let him do anything else, flushed and furious. Then all at once Taemin relaxes, blinking away the angry tears standing in his eyes, and Jonghyun wants words, wants so badly to know what Taemin sees.

Taemin kisses him instead.

For a couple seconds it’s no good, breath punched out of him, Jonghyun’s lips pressed back against his teeth almost painfully, noses bumping, and then somewhere in there he realizes Taemin is kissing him, Taemin is kissing him, and then it’s so good he can’t keep up when Taemin starts to pull away, and it’ll be over before it started and.

Jonghyun chases him, gets a hand on Taemin’s neck, bites his mouth open and licks inside, and then he kind of loses it for good. He realizes pretty quickly that Taemin doesn’t know what he’s doing, but it doesn’t seem to slow Taemin down at all, or stop him from doing whatever he wants, crawling into Jonghyun’s lap like he’s trying to crawl into his skin and bearing him down onto the bed. His hands are everywhere, burning Jonghyun up from the inside out, and maybe Jonghyun won’t be able to handle him.

“Taeminnie, what do you want me to do?” he tries to ask, when he has the breath. “I’ll do whatever you want, baby, tell me, talk to me.”

He has to get it out of him bit by bit instead. Vise-grip on his shoulders when he rolls them over, gets between Taemin’s legs. Huffed breath when he sticks his tongue in Taemin’s navel, then hips snapping under his palms and hands fisting in his hair when Jonghyun takes him into his mouth, fills himself up with Taemin until tears prick his eyes and he can’t breathe for wanting him. Stupid, familiar smirk when Taemin tightens around Jonghyun’s fingers and then his dick, moans and grunts lost in Jonghyun’s mouth, fluid arch of his back and roll of his hips, teeth in Jonghyun’s shoulder and thighs squeezing his hips, the dazed look in his eyes and the pained, bit-off sounds he makes when he comes all over Jonghyun’s stomach, hot and wet. Hand stroking clumsily through Jonghyun’s hair afterward, when Jonghyun comes back to himself, slips out of him and gathers him up and tries closing his eyes. Heavy, boneless sprawl against Jonghyun’s side when he assimilates to this new world, same as the old world, where there’s no such thing as personal space.

 

Taemin tells him some stuff before he drifts off, mostly because Jonghyun keeps asking, even if he doesn’t get where any of Jonghyun’s questions come from. It doesn’t seem like he’ll start taking responsibility for the way everything he says and does becomes something new when Jonghyun hears or sees it, either, but that’s probably impossible.

Anyway. Taemin says he’s been like this since they met, more or less. Jonghyun thinks he means he’s loved Jonghyun since he was thirteen years old, and he already knows that, he wants to know when he fell in love with him, but Taemin sees it differently. He insists that he’s grown a lot since then, but his feelings never have. Eventually Jonghyun just comes out and asks Taemin when he started wanting to have sex with Jonghyun, and he gets the answer he wants. Taemin turns his face into the pillow to hide his embarrassment, says he was sixteen.

When they started living together. Ah.

Jonghyun thinks about that for a while, thinks about Taemin as he remembers him, and thinks about Taemin now, and nothing changes for him. He doesn’t know what to make of that, if Taemin loving him for so long means he loves Jonghyun more, or if it’s the opposite, because it’s only been a year and a half for him and he’s already out of his mind. Probably neither, because the truth probably isn’t a choice between the things that come the closest in Jonghyun’s head. And anyway, it doesn’t matter right now.

There are still so many things he wants to ask. What Taemin likes about him, what made him like him, if it’s too weird to go on dates with Jonghyun, because Jonghyun really wants to date him, wants to take him out and find excuses to touch him and buy him stuff and say cheesy things. If there’s ever been anyone else. If there’s anything Taemin wants to know about him, anything at all.

If Taemin likes him, because somehow all this has happened, and Jonghyun still can't adapt.

But he doesn’t want to be too much, and he has tomorrow night, and.

 

 

Jonghyun wakes up.

It’s his alarm, and he’s slapped a hand onto the nightstand to shut it up when everything comes back and it keeps buzzing and buzzing and buzzing from across the room. Jonghyun spends half a minute in complete denial, burying his face in Taemin’s pillow, but it’s never going to stop on its own, and he’s never going back to sleep now, so he gives in, lifts Taemin’s head carefully off his arm and gives his clock the attention it so desperately craves.

Three thirty. They have somewhere to be in an hour, they have some kind of variety thing, and somehow that seems more insane than the fact that he fucked Taemin just a couple hours ago, and he knows he’s going to do it again tonight, or maybe Taemin will fuck him, he's not picky. Either way, it’s going to happen just as surely as Taemin is going to get up in another ten to twenty minutes, and Kibum is going to be annoying and get the rest of them to eat now so they don’t annoy the hell out of him complaining later, and Taemin is going to sit with Jonghyun in the back seat and try to nap on his shoulder and maybe Jonghyun will hold his hand.

Taemin shifts slightly, bare shoulder peaking out of the blanket, and Jonghyun pauses, takes stock, realizes the bottom has dropped out of his stomach. He’s going to have to wake him up. He’s going to have to get him to talk about all of this, make sure he wants all the things from Jonghyun that Jonghyun wants from him, wants things to change the way Jonghyun wants them to change. Wants to be Jonghyun’s, the way Jonghyun wants to be Taemin’s. And then they have to find a way to tell the others.

No one ever gives Jonghyun any fucking time.

Five minutes, he has five minutes left until he has to wake Taemin up. Jonghyun is just going to sit here and watch him sleep for a while, and pretend his heart isn’t pounding, and not think about what Taemin will see when he wakes up.

 

**The other important thing? Jonghyun can't get out of his own head.**


End file.
